Where I try to find a way to keep living meaningfully in the what remains of the changes inspired by the Occupy Movement.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Idea #11: Carry Peace In My Pocket

(Disclosure Statement: This may be more all about me than usual.)

I foolishly sign up for email updates from several blogs - oddly, most of them urge me to consume. I should probably unsubscribe (maybe next week's idea?). I get all the TeamBuy and EthicalDeals and BuyMoreButFeelGoodCauseItWasADeal emails a girl could desire.

Another feed I get is from Simple Mom which is certainly less consumey, and often points me in directions I like to go. I also like to smirk at my own inside joke to myself about being a simple mom - not 'simple', like simplicity, but 'simple', like dim. I feel a bit not-so-bright most days and it's kind of nice to think there might be a whole website set up to support me.

There is a new theme happening for Christmas, and so right now every email update shows up on my phone with the subject "Plan Your Pe.." which I automatically fill in with "perfect Christmas." And I am Every Time gratefully surprised to open it and read "Plan Your Peaceful Christmas".

Peaceful. Oh, yes please.

Peaceful like the dis-encampment of Occupy Vancouver this week, when miraculously the tents were taken down and moved two or three times and then ultimately gone without any police officers having to dress up in riot gear. I'm not altogether clear on why this wasn't more newsworthy - this is astonishing to me and entirely unexpected. I am deeply thankful that neither the law enforcement officers nor the occupiers were required to be physically harmed to bring an end to this part of the protest. That it has gone mostly un-noticed and un-said in the public discourse and media reporting perhaps tells us all we need to know.

I have to confess though, that peace is not my own personal go-to. As evidenced by The Case Of The (It Turned Out Not So) Anonymous Commenter, my own heart goes first to verbal violence and anger-fuelled retorts. I took the edge off by using facebook to vent, but I know my own heart and know that peace was not reigning there. And that was the most peaceful encounter I probably had that day - I was raging in most directions, especially at home.

The structures that wreck us are fuelled by discord and discontent. From the Too Big To Address Here military-industrial complex that diverts all our productivity to the pursuit of war-making to You Deserve A Break Today advertising that reminds us to spend our way out of stress and ill-will and unhappiness, our world requires our Not Peace to push us to consume.

If I pursue peace, I think maybe I undermine a structure that builds itself on our ill-will and anger, a structure that loves our divisions and separateness from one other, a structure that uses violence to maintain itself.

This week, I will try carrying peace in my pocket. I will watch for ways to invest in peace and starve violence.

Occupy Me.

IDEA #11 Response:Do you see peace as a means of undermining All That Should Not Be? In what ways can you invest in peace?